A recent speech by President Obama in National Prayer Club mentioned Crusade and slavery. It is a real surprise to me that these two issues were still misunderstood by President of United States. Leading scholars in relevant fields do not agree with President’s views. Let us consider Crusade first. We should understand first the context of Crusade. Late 4th century Christianity became the state religion of Rome Empire. The original Christendom ranged from Europe, Asia, to Africa. About 250 years later or 600 years after the begin of Christianity, Islam originated in Saudi desert. Quran calls for jihad. Muhammad and caliphs succeeded him used jihad to take away two thirds of the original Christendom, including Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, North Africa, etc. Leading scholars Bernard Lewis who is world most prominent scholar on Middle East History, Earle E. Cairns, Thomas F. Madden, Robert Spencer all agree that Crusade which started in 1095 was a DEFENSIVE response to jihad. Two short articles Crusaders and Historians, Crusade Propaganda by Thomas F. Madden provide some overview. The book Islam Unveiled by Robert Spenser describes:“…… Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being molested by Muslims and prevented from reaching the holy places. Some were killed. This was the impetus that finally moved Western Christianity to try recover just one small portions of the Christian lands that had fallen to the Muslim sword over the previous centuries. … … By Christian lights, many Crusaders undeniably sinned. On the Temple Mount, as Bill Clinton reminded the world, they transgressed the strict boundaries of the Just War doctrine. But this doesn’t mean that their cause itself was wrong. In so far as Crusades were fought to protect Christians in the Holy Land and to turn back the Muslims who had conquered so much of Christendom, they represent a just cause.” Although brief, Earle E. Cairns also mentioned in book Christianity Through the Centuries that Crusade was defensive in nature.
Some Crusades were not well organized and many were not well trained. Some did commit atrocities. But from what I read, both sides at that time committed atrocities. Also we should not use modern moral standards to judge wars of one thousand year earlier. Crusade does not follow Jesus’s teaching “turn the other cheek”. However, there is much to consider in order to interpret this part of Bible teachings, which is beyond our discussion.
Let us turn to slavery now. According to Daniels and Hyslop’s Almanac, slavery likely occurred in all ancient civilizations. At the beginning slaves were not all Africans. In fact, the root of English word slave is Slavs where majority of slaves came from. When Rome Empire defeated a country, many free citizens of that country became slaves. Fernand Braudel in his classical book A History of Civilizations wrote: “It was Islam …… which first practised Black slave trade on a large scale.” Economic demand of labor motivated large scale black slavery trade, both to Americas and to Islamic world. Braudel quoted estimates of black slavery trade to both Americas and Islamic world, the latter might be even larger. British politician William Wilberforce and others spearheaded ban of slavery trade, later slavery completely. Bernard Lewis in his book What Went Wrong? wrote: “The European powers, who used their influence and even their armed forces to impose the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of non-Muslims.” In Islam Unveiled, Robert Spenser reports that slavery still exists now in some Muslim countries. Fernand Braudel also mentioned that only in 1908 China first passed law to ban slavery. So Christian West lead progressive abolition movement. No apology to Islam is needed here.
Bible and Quran contain passages on slavery. Do Bible and Quran advocate slavery? It all depends on how to interpret these Holy books. Slavery existed long before either Bible or Quran was written. My view is that Bible has passages on slavery because the authors regarded salvation more important. The abolition of slavery requires a social revolution and the time was not right.
(This short comment was submitted to Washington Post soon after Obama’s speech in the National Prayer Club. It was not accepted. Soon an opinion article by M Gerson mentioned sensitivity of President speech. I can see his viewpoint but I still think that the public should know the complete picture.)